Dr. Applebaum appeared at the scene of numerous terror attacks in Jerusalem, helping evacuate and treat scores of victims.

In September 2003, on the second anniversary year of the September 11 attacks, Dr. Appelbaum came to New York and discussed best practices in handling emergencies.

He returned home for his daughter Nava’s wedding. The next day, they were killed in an Islamic terrorist bombing attack on the eve of her wedding.

The commandment to “love one’s neighbor” is carried out by Israel’s military and civilians in their responses to disasters around the world — both natural and man-made; at the time of crisis and years later; to both friends and enemies.

The commandment is broader than just loving friends, as the entire quote makes clear. It also covers people that hurt you. It is easy to ignore such people and hold a grudge. The bible directs people to avoid that instinct. Explain the pain; correct the imperfect. There may not be reconciliation, but kindness may lead to dialogue. At a minimum, the positive actions will have a positive impact on your other actions and attitudes.

Remembering Naava Applebaum

A few hours before the bombing, on September 9, Naava Applebaum attended the mikveh (ritual bath), as required by Halakha (Jewish law) for all brides prior to their wedding. She then began helping her family with the wedding arrangements, when her father decided to take her out for a “father-daughter” talk before her wedding. They went to Café Hillel on Emek Refaim Street, in Jerusalem.

On the day of the bombing, September 9, security guards in the vicinity of Café Hillel were told to be on the lookout for a suicide bomber. At around 11:20 pm, a security guard stationed at a nearby pizza parlor noticed a man walking by with a bulky square-shaped box under his shirt.He yelled at the man to stop, but the man refused. The security guard did not want to shoot him in the back, for fear that it would detonate the bomb. A few seconds later, the suicide bomber detonated the bomb close to the entrance of Café Hillel.Nava and her father were entering the cafe at that time.Nava was killed together with her father.She was dead by the time she was reached by paramedics.

Applebaum’s fiancé, Chanan Sand, collapsed in the emergency room of Shaare Zedek Medical Center upon hearing that his fiancée had not survived.She was buried the next day adjacent to her father in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery, in the western part of Jerusalem.

Hundreds of friends and relatives traveling to Israel for the wedding arrived to find that they would be attending her funeral instead, on the day she was supposed to get married. Sand attended the funeral, and placed in her grave the wedding ring he had planned on giving her at the wedding.

“Allahu Akbar”

“After a hard fought battle, Students for Justice in Palestine at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) claimed a major victory last night when the Associated Student Council passed a resolution calling for divestment from companies profiting from Israeli occupation.

The result – 20 in favor, 12 against and 1 abstention – was announced to loud cheers, the video above shows.

The resolution, proposed by Students for Justice in Palestine, is similar to recent resolutions passed at UC Irvine and UC Riverside and names Boeing, General Dynamics Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Ingersoll-Rand and Raytheon among other companies that “profit from Israel’s military occupation and violence against Palestinians in violation of international law and human rights.”

The vote is not binding on the university, but is another indicator of growing support for divestment among students, which is why Zionist groups have vigorously opposed such resolutions whenever they have been proposed and have supported draconian measures to suppress student activism at the University of California and other campuses.

Echoing false and inflammatory claims that have been made by opponents of divestment, UCSD senior Mikhail Imanovich had told the Council, “This marginalizes the Jewish students on campus and makes them feel unsafe and unwanted.”

The divestment resolution victory dealt a defeat to campus group Tritons for Israel that had organized opposition to divestment claiming it would be divisive.

Members of Students for Justice in Palestine refuted such accusationsin the campus newspaper, arguing that, “All political issues are divisive. But already, UCSD is taking a side on this issue by having money invested in companies that are integral to maintaining the Israeli occupation. That is divisive.”

The Shame of Israel Apartheid Week

“K A H A N E”

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea

THE GREAT SABBATH

D I V R E I T O R A H – Nissan -5749 April-1989

It is the necessary, the indispensable preface and introduction to Passover. It is the explanation that cries out the ultimate message of the holiday, the basic lesson of the feats of our freedom. It is the foundation of foundations that raises Passover from an insipid, saccharine social custom beginning and ending with recipes printed in the New York Times women’s section; from a golden opportunity for Manischewitz to return to Jewishness through capitalist Passover profits even as the truly frum, raise their level of religiosity by raising the level of prices; from a Jewish people that marches on its Seder stomach even as it moves on to the annual national lie. “Next Year in Jerusalem.” It is the Great Sabbath, which attempts to save Judaism from myopic ritualism, to make the Jew, Jewish and the Orthodox, religious.

Sabbath Hagadol, the great Sabbath. The Sabbath preceding the Passover, the Sabbath that cries out the basic, the ultimate message of the enormous Exodus from Egypt, of Passover itself. Sabbath Hagadolthat gives us the lesson without which Passover, the Jewish people itself, lose all reason for being. Sabbath Hagadolcommemorating the basic lesson of Judaism: Faith, real faith, faith in G-d who really is greater than the mighty Pharaoh, or the regal Reagan or the burningless Bush – Sabbath Hagadol. The great Sabbath, that began more than 3,000 years ago on a Sabbath in Imperial Egypt.

“Speak unto all the congregation of Israel, saying: In the tenth day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb…”

It is a special, an awesome commandment, one that is given to every Jew, hence the unique words “Speak unto all the congregation.” Take a lamb and bind it up for four days.

You believe that this is a simple commandment. Hardly. The lamb is more than an animal; it is the very god of Egypt. It is a deity, a hallowed creature before whom the Egyptian bows and whose meat dare not touch his mouth. And the Jews, “every man” thereof, are commanded to take this lamb, this Egyptian god, the deity of their masters, and tie it to their beds, to their posts, bind it up. And when the astonished and outraged Egyptian masters will ask: “What are you doing? The answer shall be: We shall soon slaughter this lamb, the deity, your god, and eat it.

Do you still think this is a simple, bland commandment? It is a commandment fraught with danger to life, a commandment that surely sent fear down the spines of the Jewish slaves, that, without a doubt, led scholars to rush and ponder whether pikuach nefesh, danger to life might perhaps demand the postponing of the dangerous commandment.

Nor does the Almighty stop there. He insists on a policy of extremism, of goading the gentile. Not content with a commandment that cries desecration of the Egyptian god, that taunts him with the sight of his deity bound up, the G-d of Israel insists that the Jew add salt to the wound.

“And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roasted with fire… eat it not partially cooked, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire, its head with its legs and with its insides complete.”

Awake and consider! This is what Passover is all about; only this! This is Judaism what Judaism is all about; only this! This is what the duty and the role and the essence of the Jew is all about; only this! To affirm to the world, but first to ourselves that the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, is. That He truly does exist, that He is the One, the only One, that He, only He, directs the world, the fate of man, the destiny of His people. That whatever will be for the Jew will be only because He so decrees. That the gentile has no relevance to the Jewish fate, that the Pharaohs of all time, the ones in Egypt and the ones in Washington are utterly irrelevant to what will be with the Jew.

On the Great Sabbath in Egypt, the L-rd taught us the lesson that we trampled in the dust, the dust of secularism and the dust of the yeshiva world alike: The lesson that the Jew must raise high, must flaunt the glory and Omnipotence of his G-d. That the world must be compelled to see their deities, their gods and idols, bound up and humiliated and destroyed. That one must goad the gentile in order to raise high the banner of the L-rd. That Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of the Name of the G-d of Israel, demands an open, fearless, flaunting sacrifice of the idols and deities of the gentiles that deny the uniqueness of the G-d of Israel, His exclusiveness, His Oneness! The lamb is openly tied and those who tremble and whisper: “But we dare not goad the gentile,” are silenced with thunderous contempt. The lamb is slaughtered and roasted whole and fully and openly. It cannot be hastily covered in a pot where it will not be seen. Its identity cannot be disguised by cutting its body into pieces. We cannot escape the danger of the gentile by avoiding confronting and goading him. No. Precisely the opposite!

The same gentile who thundered and thunders: “Who is the L-rd? I know not the L-rd and will not let Israel go!” must be taught the eternal lesson of: “The L-rd is G-d, the L-rd is G-d!” The gentile does not wish to “know” G-d, to acknowledge His exclusive kingship. He must be taught that lesson in an open and bold and humiliating way. He and his idols must be humbled and broken. The lamb is taken openly. The lamb is slaughtered openly. And those who cringe in populism and whisper: “But one dare not goad the gentiles…” are silenced by the thunder of the L-rd, whose commandment is eternalized by the Rabbis of the Great Sabbath, Sabbath Hagadol. So, let that Sabbath be understood and appreciated and embraced. For without it, there cannot be a Passover, an understanding of what that Passover really is. And without that, when the Jewish child asks for the meaning of this night, the pathetic father who knows not what to tell him will doom his child to become a pathetic as he: practitioner of Jewish ritual, but never, never a religious Jews.

2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The founder, Henri Dunant, would be very sorry to see what has happened to his organization since he passed away.

Jean Henri Dunant (May 8, 1828 – October 30, 1910), also known as Henry Dunant, was a Swiss businessman and social activist. During a business trip in 1859, he was witness to the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in modern day Italy. He recorded his memories and experiences in the book A Memory of Solferino which inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863. The 1864 Geneva Convention was based on Dunant’s ideas. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy.

The 12 minute video below (start at about 1:25, after the trumpet player), features 19 year old Chloe Valdary, a black Christian University of New Orleans sophomore who explains the antisemitism that hides behind false claims of apartheid against the Jewish state.

This young woman states the problem more honestly and eloquently than any rabbi I have ever heard!

Ms. Valdary created a campus-based group “Allies for Israel,” which is made up of both Jews and non-Jews. The group endeavors to fight BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) actions against Israel, anti-Israel sentiment and anti-semitism on campus.

Like this:

According to al Arabiya TV, groups of Islamist militants have formed what they call “Islamist Police” patrolling a number of streets in London and forcing citizens to comply with their interpretation of Sharia law. In a move that can be projected to possibly also happen in other European countries, and later across the Atlantic, groups of militants, organized in patrols have been stopping British citizens asking them to throw away alcoholic drinks or asking women not to wear short skirts, because (according to al Arabiya) “they are passing through Muslim areas.” These quasi-militias have established a Youtube channel called ”
“الشريعة.. مستقبل بريطانيا” or “Sharia, the future of Britain”. According to observers, experts on urban Jihadism, “these are the early signs of manifestations of Sharia-only zones, similar to the Taliban practices in pre 9/11 Afghanistan. But these are taking place in a major Western capital. This is a prelude to serious breakdown in secular order. It all began as local claims, but manipulated by Jihadists, now it is close from creating enclaves.”http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2013/01/20/261497.html

GENEVA, October 16, 2009 — Today’s emergency UN Human Rights Council debate on the Goldstone Report predictably saw a line-up of the world’s worst abusers condemn democratic Israel for human rights violations. In a heated lynch mob atmosphere, Kuwait slammed Israel for “intentional killing, intentional destruction of civilian objects, intentional scorched-earth policy,” saying Israel “embodied the Agatha Christie novel, ‘Escaped with Murder’.” Pakistan said the “horrors of Israeli occupation continue to haunt the international community’s conscience.” The Arab League said, “We must condemn Israel and force Israel to accept international legitimacy.” Ahmadinejad’s Iran said “the atrocities committed against Palestinians during the aggressions on Gaza should be taken seriously” and followed up by the international community “to put an end to absolute impunity and defiance of the law.”

What the world’s assembled representatives did not expect, however, was the speech that followed(see text below), organized by UN Watch. We invited as our speaker a man who repeatedly put his life on the line to defend the democratic world from the murderous Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and the Taleban. The moment he began his first sentence, the room fell silent. Judge Goldstone, author of the distorted report that prompted today’s one-sided condemnation of Israel but not Hamas, had refused to hear Col. Kemp’s testimony during his “fact-finding” hearings. But UN Watch made sure today that this hero’s voice would be heard — at the U.N., and around the world